Research On Internal Mechanism Of Opportunistic Behavior Safeguards In The Context Of Specific Investment

Resources an enterprise possessed are usually limited, which can not meet all its demands in the process of survival and development, therefore it needs to cooperate with other enterprises in order to achieve complementary resources, at the same time reduce costs and improve efficiency. However, in cooperation between enterprises interest conflict is inevitable, one party may be at the expense of others’ interests for the sake of its own, resulting in opportunistic behavior occurs, thereby increase external uncertainties and risks for the cooperative participants, especially in the context of one who made specific investments, the risk of opportunistic behavior it faces is greater. Consequently, out of risk aversion, the phenomenon of specific assets underinvestment is common in reality, leading to Pareto improvement can’t be effectively achieved in the cooperation between enterprises, thus negatively impact the performance of inter-enterprise cooperation.There has been a large amount of existing research on safeguarding against opportunistic behavior in the context of specific investment, among which integration, formal contract and relational contract have been generally accepted in theory and played a big role in practice, besides, some studies have also found that reciprocal investments and offsetting investments have negative effects on opportunistic behavior, but neither have been widely recognized in theory nor got enough attention in practice. While the fact enterprises adopt multiple ways to safeguard against opportunistic behaviors still inevitably suffer from them calls for further exploration and research on opportunistic behavior safeguards. Based on existing research, this paper mainly studies reciprocal investments and offsetting investment to what extent play a role in the context of specific investments, and then make further study on its internal mechanisms in the perspective of resource dependence theory. Empirical tests prove that both reciprocal investments and offsetting investments have significant negative effects on opportunistic behavior, besides, both of them function through adjusting interdependence between partners, in which reciprocal investments have significant positive effect on joint dependence and negative effect on power asymmetry, moreover through the partial intermediary role of joint dependence and power asymmetry have a significant negative effect on opportunistic behavior, while offsetting investments only have a significant positive effect on joint dependence among partners, and through the partial intermediary role of joint dependence have a significant negative role on reciprocal investments, but neither the negative effect of offsetting investments on power asymmetry nor the mediating effect of power asymmetry between offsetting investments and opportunistic behavior is validated.In consideration of theoretical analysis and empirical test results, our study suggests that reciprocal investments and offsetting investments have an negative effect on opportunistic behavior in the context of specific investments separately or jointly, and the validity of them partially depend on the adjustment of interdependence between enterprises, in which reciprocal investments is more helpful to strengthen bilateral dependency smoothly, therefore can be given a priority in decision-making, we anticipate more emerging opportunistic behavior safeguards will be stimulated aiming at adjusting interdependence relationships, thus our study can not only provide enterprises theoretical bases for decision-making, but also can promote further research on opportunistic behavior safeguards.